A fish bowl on the beach, a bed with a mattress of grass, a pig skull with golden molar on the dining table – MyeongBeom Kim leads us into a strange world. Like aliens landed on earth by accident, we are stunned and confused. Absurd settings, at first sight. But the longer we look at them, the more we learn to see.

To show us another view on the world, this is MyeongBeom Kim's concern. In his photographs and installations, he creates surrealistic sceneries. Like the Surrealists in the early 20th c., like René Magritte in his paintings, he combines apparently paradox elements to truthful compositions. It is the truth about the world we live in: Focussed on technique and possession, we are blind for nature.

I always want to go back to nature from this mechanical world. However, I know it is impossible for even me, who is accustomed to this mechanical world, to return to nature. So, I would like to start showing how mother nature is great to others who cannot see it. My concern about nature was expressed by setting a traffic signal light, a mail box, and a manhole cover, that are creatures of civilization, on the sea. This unexpected combination made it possible to create new time, space, and story.

By bringing the existence of nature into relief, I tried to make the audience to think themselves as aliens, who came from the external world, has to have an emergency landing on the earth. (MyeongBeom Kim)

The pig skull appears on the dining table. A three-dimensional osseous form: It is waste, oddly precious through the golden crown. The skull reappears on the TV screen and on a canvas: Two-dimensional images: They are sublimated and artificial objects of art. The transformation from nature to aseptic art is perfect.

Nature is excluded from our world. We know a tamed, a sophisticated facet of it: Gold fishes in a bowl, indoor plants, warm water in the bathroom and domesticated fire in the kitchen. The frightening aspect of nature is eliminated. Our world is sterile. But when we meet the wild side of nature and life, we panic. MyeongBeom Kim gives us a notion of the vastness of nature, its beauty. And we are part of it and play by the rule…

Myeongbeom Kim received his BFA from the University of Seoul, South Korea, and his MFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Since 1997 he had several group and solo exhibition in Korea and in Chicago.

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